Finally switched to linux... what now?

[freeztar]

configuring and compiling a kernel and all the modules, refreshing the module library in modules.d and finally recompiling the modules that were not compiled with hooks to your updated kernel in order to get your system back up and running, fairly straight forward stuff, here, freezy :P

 

Oh, of course. Sorry, I didn't know what I was thinking. :(

[alexander]

Methinks it's a feeling i can describe in this Futurama quote (season 2 episode 6)

Which ones are new?

The green dude and the fat man

I swear i've never seen that robot before, either

I'm Bender, you know, the loveable rascal

Oh yes, yes, my good friend, ofcourse

[enorbet2]

A little clarity follows:

 

pshht, make xconfig is for little girls, real men use menuconfig, or just edit the .config file manually :)

 

C'mon Alexander, the entire thread was created for beginners by the more experienced (not the imperious) or even the cartoon wouldn't have been so funny. Additionally I specifically qualified my recommendation for both, thusly -

 

<One can compile one's own (not as difficult as it sounds especially if beginners use "make xconfig" before they're ready for "make menuconfig") >

 

and even pointed out why beginners would be more comfortable until they become familiar with common associations AND mentioned the caveat that it is better done from single user environment.

 

xconfig implies an X interface, and when you are running 8-9 boxes that you constantly remote manage, X is just a bad practice, therefore if you want to learn an interface that works on all systems, use the curl interface with menuconfig :D

 

I hardly think someone who qualifies as "finally switching to Linux" is administering 8-9 Linux boxes or even yet concerned with such, so who does this help?

 

 

you mean make && make modules_install and then you should reboot with the new kernel and probably modules-update afterwards, after which you should recompile/reinstall your alsa modules and recompile/reinstall any other third party drivers you may have had installed (madwifi-ng, nvidia or ati)...

 

No. I meant what I said as far as I took it. If one is learning how to compile kernels and is using "make xconfig" it is permissible to build the basic kernel and modules but a little safer to install them from outside X, especially in a Debian environment which commonly requires consideration and in many cases modification to build from source, sidestepping "kbuild". It was not my intention, particularly within this thread, to provide a step-by-step

instruction set for building and running a new kernel. Though I have built hundreds from scratch, all I wished to do was plant the concept that it isn't as hard as it seems at first to newbs.

 

To wrap it up, no person new to Linux should attempt to build, let alone install, a new custom kernel without reading the appropriate "How To" *specific* to one's distro. It is worth noting that it is also wise to update Lilo or Grub menu so that both your original and your new kernel are available to attempt boot until you learn to stop making bugs or rather undesirable choices. Once experienced, it is my personal opinion that it is worth it to reconfigure your distro to a more generic environment friendly to building and installing directly from source and from command line and stop relying on binaries to do the work for you. It's simply worth it.

Jimmy

[freeztar]

Thank you, Jimmy! :)

 

As a noob, it's much more productive to read a post like this. :D

 

It's been an interesting experience trying to get help with Ubuntu. Most folks either ignore my questions because of simplicity, or they act aloof. It's the rare breed that actually *helps* by walking me through various problems. It's these types of people (who don't care if their "geek license" gets revoked) that really make the difference.

 

FWIW, my wireless nic is still not working properly in Ubuntu. Though, with the help of a most gracious person, I might be getting close. :)

 

[ubuntu] RTL8187 native module for Realtek is working, but... - Ubuntu Forums

[enorbet2]

Hello Freeztar and thanks

Quick answer - One learns to shop hardware with OpSys in mind after having been burned enough times though I realize many advertise some models of your chipset as fine for Mac/Linux. Presently I avoid such issues in wireless, even though my DLink DWL-G520 XtremeG PCI NIC works great w/ madwifi module, by employing a sweet little device, the G730AP, you should come to know, especially if you either LAN game or do business on this PC. Look here:

 

Wireless Pocket Access Point - Router - Wireless Client

 

The G-730AP is a geek dream since it is fairly cheap (around $30US) needs NO DRIVERS at all and can act as a wifi router, a wifi nic, or a wifi Access Point. It handles 108mbs no probs, ii's browser configurable and has WPA security. All any OpSys sees is the IP you give it. Extremely useful, versatile, and above all, simple solution.

 

Long answer - I see a lot of forum chatter on this chipset so let me read a little before I try to help you fix it, if that is even possible yet. In general the native modules are a better choice than ndiswrapper but generalities don't help you. It concerns me that one of the 1st posts I read said he's achieved stability by turning down from 54 to 5. Yuuuch!

 

So I'll check back w/ you later but remember while it may not be geeky to employ money instead of time, it can be really practical if you calculate what your time is worth and weigh in the loss of learning potential by cheating with bucks. Your choice.

 

L8z

Jimmy

[enorbet2]

To Freeztar, other recordists and audiophiles

I highly recommend 64Studio because it comes standard with a realtime kernel option and all the tools including Jack, Jamin, Hydrogen, Audacity, especially Ardour (which is now on version 2.8) already in place and compiled to interact. They make it especially easy to try out since bootable Live CD (or, faster, thumbdrive) are routine and readily available for dast download. The support community is amazing and one place you can actually find the author of both Jack and Ardour is here

 

Anyone Using Ardour The FREE DAW? - Gearslutz.com

 

Ask yourself if you can talk to the one guy responsible for Tracktion or ProTools? Not only are they committee designed and driven (and act like it by comparison) but they are generally inaccessible. Success of such tools and distros bears heavily not only on music but all of Open Source especially since Ardour was ported to Mac, albeit w/ some issues between Intel and PPC.

 

Do yourself a favor and at least read about it but it is no big step to a LiveCD to see it and use it for oneself. It is easier than installing.

[alexander]

i see that we wont agree with the course that beginner linux users should take, you see, i started with installing gentoo, and while i was not a linux guru, first install, i did mostly myself, with some help from my friends, took me a week but i learned a lot, one of those things was how to properly compile a kernel, and while i still change how i approach configurations, and my kernels have significantly down-sized and became a bit faster and optimized, i have basically, well, more or less, been doing the same thing since my first week of being a total linux noob... I have never used xconfig, i refuse to use xconfig, its like using genkernel or one of the pre-configured ubuntu kernels, just not all that much fun.

 

but i do welcome the enthusiasm to show a different side of learning linux, certainly helps to have someone else here who is rather linux-savy...

[freeztar]

i started with installing gentoo, and while i was not a linux guru, first install, i did mostly myself, with some help from my friends, took me a week but i learned a lot,

 

:D

 

The only "friends" I have to help me are you guys and whatever vagabond happens by my posts at ubuntuforums. :)

 

I understand and appreciate the power of self-learning, but it can only take you so far. I'm quite certain that a day of messing with Linux by the side of an expert would probably equate to two weeks on my own, at least.

 

I get by with a little help from my friends. :)

[enorbet2]

Hey

I see you've had a good response from someone knowledgeable walking you through ndiswrapper and it looks worth checking out. I try to keep up by using a few distros but the truth is I really don't like package managers so I naturally boot the others less and less and just to work out some little detail often. I spend my time in Slackware where I build anything not included in install from source. I don't even like Gentoo's "emerge" so you can imagine what I think of yum, apt-get, or synaptic. It all just muddies the waters making divisions between people who could otherwise help each other.

 

Having said that at least for now (K)Ubuntu is still fairly compatible with basic Debian so I have to ask, "Have you seen this?"

 

rtl818x - Debian Wiki

 

This should work for the native driver as long as you have the kernel mentioned. See this is the kind of stuff you can avoid once you learn to build your own kernel. But this should work for now.

[freeztar]

Ping!

 

Ok, I've done this before with no luck.

 

How do I build my own kernel? :lightning

[enorbet2]

Oh Man! My head almost exploded, "Scanner" style, at the prospect of all the tangents associated with attempting to explain the building and deployment of a custom kernel since on one hand it really shouldn't be as fraught with fear and trepidation as it so often is but it is not trivial yet it sounds like such a cop out to constantly issue disclaimers and ymmv's. So actually I went ahead and wrote maybe 1000 words before I shelved the idea for two good reasons:

1) With the advent of the 2.6.x kernel it got easier for beginners but more disparate by distro - too wide a scope for a forum

2) I don't recommend things I've never done and I have never used a binary to auto build and/or install a kernel. I prefer manual and that takes preparation and commans too wide for a thread primarily for beginners.

 

So I recommend anyone interested google for their specific distro's kernel build HowTo. If you just want a peek, download and untar the kernel source tar to "/usr/src" and change to the "/usr/src/linux-2.6.foo" directory it creates in a terminal and, as mentioned before for beginners, type "make xconfig". Don't really change any of the settings (there's only 3 options) because it's best to run "make mrproper" if you're actually going to build one.

 

If you really want to get your hands dirty and set your system up for source building and do a kernel the best way, private message me because it's too long for the thread.

 

Respectfully

Jimmy

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/installation-guide/i386/kernel-baking.html

 

How To Compile A Kernel - The Ubuntu Way | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

 

HOWTO: Kernel Compilation for Newbies - Ubuntu Forums

[freeztar]

https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/installation-guide/i386/kernel-baking.html

 

How To Compile A Kernel - The Ubuntu Way | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

 

HOWTO: Kernel Compilation for Newbies - Ubuntu Forums

 

Thanks DD. Have you gone down this road yourself? I'd be interested in any advice you could give as you are a relative noob yourself. You know, stuff like "whatever you do, don't do this!" and the like.

[alexander]

One thing to note here:

 

I would not recommend starting with a vanilla kernel (aka unpatched kernel downloaded from kernel.org), it's not that it wont work, you can compile a vanilla kernel, but i highly don't recommend doing that, getting the kernel sources that are more specifically geared for your specific distro is much more reliable and is more likely to work properly and support features your distro claims to. And we may be talking about Ubuntu, gentoo, slackware, cent, most of the bigger distros provide a source package already patched with all the patches they use, if not, they tend to provide the patches separately, but that would be reflected in their manuals or wikis for building the kernel.

 

If you would like to build one completely from scratch, then you can get the vanilla kernel, patch it with whatever patches you see fit and compile it, it will work, but generally is such a pain, especially when you are using some crazy third party patches, you have to make sure that they are compatible with other patches, then there is still no guarantee that something wont error, you may have to fix patch errors, which may or may not work, because a minor change in a patch can either effect it and leave it broken, which may brake other things, or it may work perfectly fine.

 

Reason to use Ubuntu-patched kernel for ubuntu (similarly gentoo kernel for gentoo, slacks for slacks, etc), one of the most important third party patches, software suspend, its a patch that really does not play well with some other patches, especially sound patches, it hasn't been added into the main stream kernel because of a function called at boot called "do_magic", linus had a problem with that (but it does do magic), but it's such a great patch to have for laptops, even if your acpi is supported, it does not always suspend and resume right as acpi implementations are so wildly not standardized, software suspend is (when you configure it all correctly), nearly a fool proof way to suspend. Ubuntu patches implement that patch well, but i recall having to battle with this particular beast on my custom patched kernel on gentoo on my old toshiba lappy, took me nearly a week to get it working correctly (that's before gentoo built the patches into their mainstream gentoo patch-set)...

 

Also, why would you want to build a kernel, and not optimize it for your hardware? The default kernel has nearly everything built in, there are very few modules, and i have yet to see a preconfigured kernel that has been configured to my liking, just in terms of intrinsic kernel config (how kernel itself works, this is a list of settings that most kernels, patched or not, share...)

 

Although, hey enor, if i post a generalized How-To Go About Building A Kernel in the Tutorials section, you mind checking it out, and perhaps contributing more thoughts (i always seem to miss something with those types of type-ups and have to go back time and time again to revise)?

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Thanks DD. Have you gone down this road yourself? I'd be interested in any advice you could give as you are a relative noob yourself. You know, stuff like "whatever you do, don't do this!" and the like.

 

Not yet (at least not that I know of:hihi:)....scares the hell out of me to even think of tryin it without a hard drive specifically for it.....Hopin to have another drive soon...which I'll load up with Ubu. 7.10 G.G. (cuz I have the disk for it and I know it works) then after disconecting my other drives physically...I shall play:D

 

Those were just some decent lookin how too's I found in my own checkin into the subject......I'd highly recomend you do it on another drive first before and make sure yer golden before putting it on your working drive....but that's just my humble opinion on the matter.

[Southtown]

Nah just figure out fdisk and grub. Easy.

 

$man fdisk

$man grub

[alexander]

GRUB rocks, by far the best boot loader out there IMHO.

 

Fdisk, eeeh not-so-crazy about it, i've had to use it, it is ok, but i have had better...